The Best Years of Our Lives

By Nicholas Stix
 

From Hugo Friedhofer’s Score: The Homecoming
 

 
(If this recording has trouble loading, hit this link, to listen to it at Youtube.)

If a more powerful picture than The Best Years of Our Lives has ever been made that doesn’t have The Godfather or Kane in its name, I haven’t seen it.

The idea for the picture came from producer Samuel Goldwyn’s wife, Frances, who had read an article in 1944 about the problems some veterans were having, returning to civilian life in the Midwest. Goldwyn commissioned Iowan Mac Kinlay Kantor (here and here), who had served in the Army Air Force to write a script, and Kantor duly headed to a cabin in the country with a few cases of scotch, only to return a few weeks later with a … poem! It was published in 1945 with the subtitle “A Novel” on the cover, but it’s a 268-page, narrative poem entitled Glory for Me that opens,

Fred Derry, twenty-one, and killer of a hundred men….

And a powerful poem it is, but Sam Goldwyn was not amused. He had to hire a second screenwriter, the legendary Robert E. Sherwood, winner of three Pulitzer Prizes, to translate and shape Kantor’s poem into screen prose. Sherwood worked his magic, but Kantor must share the credit, if not the Oscar. The picture won eight Oscars in all, and deserved every one of them.

Because Goldwyn had engaged Freddie March to star, the focus of the story was shifted away from Fred to Al, while Homer’s affliction was changed from spasticity to having had his hands burned off in an accident. (And a good thing, too. Homer’s spasticity in the poem is just too heartbreaking to take.) And yet, running at two hours and 50 minutes, each character has enough screen time to merit Best Actor consideration.

March imbues banker Al Stephenson with his signature mix of tragedy and comedy. Nobody played a comical drunk better than March, and Al Stephenson is a drunk. A functioning, jovial drunk, but a drunk, nonetheless. He loves his family, but hates his boss, Mr. Milton (Ray Collins) “the old hypocrite,” at the bank.

I don’t know of any harder scripting task than writing a good speech. Can’t be too short or too long. Can’t be too melodramatic. Sherwood gives March’s drunken Al Stephenson an oft-times hilarious speech as the guest of honor at a dinner held by his boss, to celebrate his return and promotion in which Al goes from the heights of his career to almost talking himself out of a job. It’s a real tightrope act, but March pulls it off.

March uses some stage business as subtle punctuation to the misery Al feels in his work life. Anytime he deals with Mr. Milton or some other intolerable situation, he must have a drink or a cigarette in his hands. His creeping problem is that he also needs a drink in his hand even when he’s in a happy situation.

Although Al is upper-middle-class, he served as a sergeant in the infantry, which permits March to meld the two other characteristics that his best roles always exemplified: The aristocrat with the common touch, as he shows off particularly in his speech, and in a confrontation with Fred.

Speaking of Fred, Dana Andrews’ role as the poor kid who made it to bombardier captain in the Army Air Force, a tortured hero who saw his buddies die in front of his eyes on a burning bomber permitted him to display his unique blend of easy masculinity and doubt-ridden vulnerability that he’d established in 1944’s Laura.

Andrews had a role big enough to qualify for a Best Actor nomination, along with March, and gave one of a handful of the greatest supporting actor performances ever, up there with Karl Malden in On the Waterfront, and Walter Brennan reading from the telephone book.

This was Andrews’ Oscar, but it was not to be.

The Academy wanted to do something for veterans that year. Harold Russell was not only a veteran, but one who’d had both of his hands burned off in an accident. It would have all been fine, if the Academy had simply given Russell the honorary Oscar that it ultimately bestowed on him. But they couldn’t leave well enough alone, and the powers that be not only gave Harold Russell an honorary Oscar, but nominated him for the official Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, as well. And who was going to stand in his way? Not that year.

The citation for Russell’s honorary Oscar reads, “For bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance in The Best Years of Our Lives.”

Don’t get me wrong; Russell gave an excellent performance by professional standards, never mind that he was a “civilian.” He was particularly good in his scenes with Dana Andrews. But Andrews gave a performance for the ages. And that was it for him.

As Al’s daughter, Peggy, Teresa Wright’s insistent performance can be annoying at times, and yet, even it works, because she is paired with Myrna Loy as her mother, Millie, whose light touch is the perfect counterpoint.

This was one of the last pictures that Greg Toland photographed. His legendary “deep focus” technique of filming a scene on a sharp angle, in order to show the action both in the foreground and background, was put to its best use in the saloon scene, where Al, Homer, and Uncle Butch are in the foreground, but the real action is in the background, as Fred makes a fateful call from the telephone booth at the other end of the bar, a call whose content only Al knows.

Director William Wyler wanted Aaron Copland to score the picture, but Copland was busy with other projects for the foreseeable future, and so Wyler instead engaged Hugo Friedhofer.

Friedhofer wrote a bold, ambitious score, but also gave the picture a distinctly Coplandian flavor. He took an uptempo theme on the speeded-up nature of town life from Copland’s score to the 1937 ballet, Billy the Kid, slowed it down, and made it lush with strings, as the leitmotif of Homer’s longsuffering girlfriend from next-door, Wilma. It’s called, “I’m a Dreamer, aren’t We All?” but should have been called, “Wilma’s Theme,” as it expresses her romantic and domestic yearnings.

I’m putting the shorter recording first, because the upload’s sound quality is more clear, the passages more discrete, and it is therefore more powerful than the ambitious upload that follows it.

The Apacus called the first one, “The Homecoming.” It depicts the emotions felt by the three protagonists, Al Stephenson (Fredric March), Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), and Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) as, sharing a taxi, they hit their hometown of Boone City, after four years off fighting the war. First comes the thrill of watching city life—their city, with pretty American girls walking down the street all dolled up—and yet, it’s like they’re seeing it for the first time. Then comes the foreboding each feels as he nears his family home, after having been away for so long. Has the world back home passed them by?

The next recording is much longer, and features highlights from Friedhofer’s entire score. Unfortunately, as one commenter observed, the transitions are muddled.

Finally, comes the scene at the airplane graveyard, thanks to Friedhofer, Toland, and Andrews, the most powerful scene in the entire picture. That scene comes early in Glory for Me, but Sherwood wisely moved it towards the end, and juxtaposes it with Fred’s father finding the medals and citations for bravery, including the Distinguished Flying Cross—just short of Medal of Honor stuff—that the humble Fred had not so much as mentioned to him and his stepmother.

Because the picture was made immediately after war’s end, Sherwood and Wyler were able to freshly capture the mood of the nation, and at the same time, certain ephemeral physical conditions, e.g., aircraft graveyards, were available that would soon be gone. Note that at the time Hollywood, which had many performers in uniform, and more than a few who'd actually seen combat, was not the enemy of the people that it has since become.

The Best Years of Our Lives was nominated for eight competitive Academy Awards, of which it won seven, plus Harold Russell’s honorary Oscar. The title is ironic, and comes from a speech in which Fred’s floozy of a wife (Virginia Mayo) complains that she gave up “the best years of my life” for him while he was off fighting in the war. (Not that the slut gave up a thing!) The double irony is that the title became an iconic phrase, due to its connection to the picture, yet shorn of its ironic origins. Over the next 20-odd years, it became standard usage in the vernacular to speak of veterans as having sacrificed “the best years of their lives.”


Hugo Friedhofer’s Suite
 

 

Aircraft Graveyard Scene
 

 


Thanks to TheApacus, DPKInsane, and Bomberguy.